


A coward's cautionary tale

by DubbioEsistenziale



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF, rpdr - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Little details of the long waltz of coming to terms with feelings, Short Chapters, Snapshots, but only marginal, cis women au, slight religious imagery, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:42:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26546965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DubbioEsistenziale/pseuds/DubbioEsistenziale
Summary: The Love that moves the Sun and all the other stars, as Dante once said.
Relationships: Trixie Mattel & Katya Zamolodchikova, Trixie Mattel/Katya Zamolodchikova
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. Ouverture

It was impossible not to stare at her once she would enter a room.  
When she appeared, it was as if the world had shifted on its axis.  
It was an hurricane, it was a fountain in the summer, it was the pillow after a long day with a fresh set of sheets that your mother just put on your bed. It was an hug at a funeral, it was the laugh in front of a tombstone, ten years later. It was the dried-up tears after a cathartic weep, drying up the skin and leaving that salty taste just on the tip of your tongue: not close enough to hate it, not far enough to ignore it.  
She was the universe, and then some more. 

This is all Katya knew once she saw her for the first time. 

By the next one, she was in love.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunday morning, Lou Reed sang. "It's just a restless feeling by my side" and well, indeed it is.  
Katya stared at the ceiling, her phone begging for a charger and her eyes for some sleep. The sun was nearing its highest point in the sky, but she could not move. She could, she didn't want to. She didn't feel the need to.  
She wasn't exactly ecstatic at the idea of attending yet again her friend Ginger's birthday party, but she sure did not have a choice. There were always too many people and not enough alcohol, she never knew anyone - or at least, anyone she would want to speak to - and usually she called it quits by midnight after a couple of hours of blending into the wallpaper, trying her hardest to pass as a lamp and not be forced to introduce herself to people she would not dare search for on Instagram, despite her best promises.  
It wasn't quite an epiphany, but it was whatever closest her brain could perceive. She was trying to pour herself something to drink, when a finger touched her shoulder. It took whatever was left of her braincells not to spill everything on the floor. A thousand words a minute, a laugh that could shatter the uncertain windows of that old house, and she didn't hear any of it. She could not tear herself away from her brown eyes. Brown like ancient oak. She was ready to hang herself from the branches in her eyes. No questions asked.  
Well, in fact some questions were indeed asked, because she ended up with a new contact on her phone that for sure didn't get there by itself. 

She rolled around in her sheets, the evil spring wind spitting on her body and on the sheets of paper lying around her room. She would get around to clean it, she said every morning, just not today, she said every evening. A long sigh forced her out the bed, stepping on sketches and brilliant 3 A.M. ideas that would put her on an FBI watchlist if they were written on anything but paper under her bed.  
She had a day ahead of her, she said every morning.  
It'll be a problem for tomorrow, she said every evening.

It's just the wasted years so close behind, Lou Reed sang.


	3. Chapter 3

Months go by like chips in a bag once you have something to look forward to in the morning.  
She woke up, sure that a notification would tell her that night's latest drama, idea, reflection. She would roll around in the sheets, answering with a sloppy photo of her sleepy face as to justify her inability to construct a proper response.  
It had been a failure. A confession, done like adults do. She was younger - by a fair shot, actually - but she knew what she wanted. She was gentle, comprehensive, honest. Her eyes had a sparkle, the oak trees had struck spring. What Katya was left with, was the crushing realization that it would not work, the fear of holding something so beautiful yet so delicate into trembling hands. Because she did not work. Or, in other words, she was a coward. She refused, she didn't refuse, she said she couldn't, she said she did not want it, she said she wanted it. It could have ended there. In that café during the hottest summer of the decade, a fan blowing Trixie's blonde locks away from her face, her soft hands resting on her lap. Katya would have smiled, hugged her and then stopped answering all messages. Block the number, move on. It always worked. Except for when it didn't.  
"I will always be here. Don't worry."  
I can wait for you. No one ever bothered. Something so beautiful yet so fragile was taken out of her hands - not to be shattered, but to be put on a shelf, waiting for the day her hands would stop shaking.  
Still, what she expected was a coffee every once in a while. A wave down the street. A Let's-not-ignore-each-other-but-nothing-more-than-a-polite-wave kind of situation. Maybe talk about the weather, or what they had been up to.  
Except they didn't.  
The morning after her phone buzzed with message, as if the day before had never existed. As if she hadn't held back tears in front of a shitty green tea, struggling not to hurt her summer leaves.  
A 3A.M. rant about everything and nothing, something a friend of a friend said to a friend in a screenshot made by a friend's girlfriend. An awful cat meme.  
"Bitch, I thought you were a dog person. Get this feline bullshit away from my phone" she answered.  
And everything became the best it had ever been.

But to say that one can, does not mean one will.  
And rightfully so.


	4. Our favourite colours are complementary.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I will never be able to get over this.  
> I wish I never learnt color theory.

Love could have kept her limbs together for two weeks at best. On the first rainy day of summer she came to the conclusion that there would not be any type of escape anytime soon.  
Because glue grows toxic, and what kept her arms on the sides of her torso was now poisoning her lungs, tempted and ever more inching towards her heart. Okay, maybe it was just the cigarettes. She should start to consider cutting down on them. She could, she does not want to.  
Katya tapped the red Malboro on the garden table ashtray. Another birthday of Ginger's. A year, more or less, came by and went. Once, she was sitting in that same spot. The cigarettes were another brand, a cheaper one. Her artworks had started to sell more in the last year, so she truly belived she could at least allow herself this small luxury. Her apartament was still a modest size, even more, it was starting to burst due to the sheer amount of eccentric knick-knacks she had collected along the years.  
Once, she wore a better dress, maybe. It depends on the tastes.  
Once, her hair was longer. A smiling face had convinced her to chop it down to a bob, and there was no way in hell she would have been able to oppose a request from such sweet lips. She never was, she never would be.  
Once, she witnessed a theophany. A divine creature, whose eyes guarded all the pain of the universe. The most beautiful sacrificial lamb. Blood stained hands, an earthly crime committed for divine salvation.  
Once, she was alone, scared, a kid lost in a grocery store. Doe eyes searching for a familiar face, or, at least, a trustworthy-seeming one.  
But the now is inescapable. Now, she entered the living room late as always, smiling, radiant, her hand tight in someone else's. Humanity's pain had found a new host, it must have been. Because her smile now lit up a room, but her eyes did not capture it. She looked around, waved with a large gesture towards the garden. She left with a soft brush of her fingers the new hand that held hers, and ran. Katya stubbed the cigarette, blowing out the last puff of smoke.  
Her best friend had arrived.


	5. So I changed mine, but I don't think it works like that.

I love you.  
I love your smile behind the scarf on a cold December morning. I love how you sulk when the sun hits you just that little bit to violently on a scorching June afternoon. I love how your fingers brush everything you pass by, discovering the textures of the world that surrounds you. No, no. It does not surround you. It turns around you. Because when you enter a room, only then it starts to exist. Life is but the moments between your absences. I love when you cry, how you do so silently and laughing through whatever is eating away at your heart. I love that it's that little muscle that guides you through life, because even at your worst, even at your most egoistical, narcissistic, angry and spiteful, it still does not stop caring for everything just a little bit too much.  
I can't care for much lately. I barely can care for myself. My hair is a mess - yours never has been - and I can barely walk through my room - yours has always been so neat - and my mind, well. You don't need a description of that old thing. If someone knows it, it's you. It has always been you. It will only ever be you.  
And so, I love you. I love how you slightly slip the tip of your tongue between your lips when you concentrate, how you always order the same coffee in the morning, but a wildy different one everytime you drink one in the afternoon. I love how you don't exist to be still, how everything is always taking place and how everything is always so full of life when it is with you. You fill me up with life.  
And for the first time I can finally say that I am alive.  
Maybe I don't love you.  
Maybe I love an idea of you. A carefully constructed image of your imperfect perfection skillfully built by my brain to have me obssess over something. To give me a pushing force. Something to get me out of bed in the morning, and not out the window. Maybe you are this. A force of the universe. Not for me, I am not pretending to be of such relevance to the Love that moves the sun and all the other stars, as Dante once said. But you are not human. You are more than that. You are the pulsating heart of the Universe, and, oh God, how happy am I to be alive to contemplate you.

Katya gently put the microphone back on the table. She finished in one single swig her glass of champagne, and left the table, smiling.  
Smiling, not looking at anything.  
Not looking at Trixie's white dress, or the ring on her finger.


End file.
